Apple, Climate Change, and the Chamber of Commerce

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I agree with almost everything Matt Yglesias says here about the Chamber of Commerce and their stance on climate change, particularly in the context of the departure of high profile companies like Apple from the Chamber.  I don't see how opposition to climate change policy can be in the interests, even short term, of their corporate stakeholders.

The fundamental problem the Chamber of Commerce is going to have on this is that they’re really really wrong. Not like how they’re morally wrong about, say, labor rights or workplace safety rules. They’re analytically mistaken about the interests of the United States business community. If we take action to avert ecological catastrophe, economic growth will still happen. Capitalism will march on. Big companies will be big, and people will earn lots of money managing them. Yes, the present-day owners of coal companies or manufacturers specifically wedded to unusually energy-intensive processes will be in trouble. But “business” in a broad and general sense will keep on keeping on. People will still want gadgets and furniture, will shop at stores, will buy and sell, and generally keep being customers for business.


The real risk is being run by doing nothing. It’s doing nothing that might end the party, and lead to various kinds of nightmare scenarios. And over time, more and more firms are going to see that they have no particular stake in underpricing pollution. One maybe of the Chamber board is a guy from Anheuser-Busch. A serious climate bill’s not going to put him out of business. Nor, to just pick board affiliated companies whose lines of business I recognize, is it going to put State Farm Insurance or IBM or AT&T or Pfizer or Accenture out of business. But the executives at those companies and their kids and their customers are all going to face all the problems caused by untrammeled climate change. And why, genuinely, should a pharmaceutical company or a telecom company be fighting to stop people from stopping an ecological disaster? It genuinely doesn’t make sense.

via yglesias.thinkprogress.org

wandering around Chinatown

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Chinatown is one of my favourite parts of Vancouver. It's the largest Chinatown in Canada and always diverse and engaging. Start here in the tranquility of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Park, and wander from there.P8220201 

I love browsing the wildlife available in wet markets.  Where did they get these geckos?

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BBQ pork, duck, and lots more.

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Octopus and other sea life abound.  a bit dessicated perhaps.

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I should note that the folks at T & T supermarket wouldn't let me take any photos of the live fish tank.   I wonder if they have had some run-ins with DFO.  It would be interesting to know where they source some of the sea life they have on offer.

Ardipithecus at the Loom

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Carl Zimmer has a great piece out on the newest (oldest?) addition to the hominid family tree.  Ardipithecus
The fossil evidence for the shift to human- like family structures is one of the many compelling aspects of the find:

Men have stubby canines, which many scientists take as a sign that the competition between males became less intense in our hominid lineage. That was likely due to a shift in family life. Male chimpanzees compete with each other to mate with females, but they don’t help with the kids when they’re born. Humans form long-term bonds, with fathers helping mothers by, for example, getting more food for the kids to eat. There’s still male-male competition in our lineage, but it’s a lot less intense than in other species.

White and his colleagues  found so many teeth of different Ardipithecus individuals that they could compare male and female canines with some confidence. The male teeth turn out to be surprisingly blunted. This result suggests that hominids shifted away from a typical ape social structure early in our ancestry. If this was a result of males forming long-term bonds with females and helping raise young, this shift was able to occur while hominids were still living a very ape-like life. Ardipithecus existed about 2 million years before the oldest evidence of stone tools, suggesting that technology was not the trigger for the evolution of nice hominid guys.


via blogs.discovermagazine.com

Glibertarian – my new favourite word

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The media and airwaves seem filled with these people.  The definition:

No, do be a glibertarian you have to first be a big “L” libertarian, and then only apply your libertarianism to other peoples problems. Glibertarians replies to any situation where someone else is hurt is “fuck you I got mine”, “told you so” or “nanny nanny boo boo”.

via www.balloon-juice.com

Yarn bombing

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I just read this article in the Vancouver courier about one of the odder forms of activism i have encountered (I've passed the display on Davie a couple of times).Knitgraffitigrowing1

Here in Vancouver, examples of yarn bombing pop up throughout the
city, particularly in the Strathcona neighbourhood. The most vibrant
example, however, is the Davie Street community garden fence, which now
sports a technicolour sweater.

Knit graffiti can also be used by
"craftivists" who want to get a message across in a creative and
dynamic way. For instance, a fence on the south side of Oppenheimer
Park has a large protest sign knitted in yellow plastic that was
created by a Downtown Eastside resident after the park was closed off
from the public June 15 for redevelopment. The sign reads: "An offence
against our neighbourhood."

For all its appeal, the joining of knitting and street activism reminds me of this:

David Frum is reasonable

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Frum takes on the wingnut habit of throwing the 'fascist' label at liberals in the context of the US health care debate. He nails it here:

Can We Get a Grip?.

Contra Rush Limbaugh, history’s actual fascists were not primarily known for their anti-smoking policies or generous social welfare programs. Fascism celebrated violence, anti-rationalism and hysterical devotion to an authoritarian leader. To date, the Obama administration has fallen rather short in these departments. Perhaps uncomfortably aware of the shortcoming, the hardliners have developed — okay, invented really — their own mythology about Obama “brownshirts.” (The popular conservative website RedState.org literally uses the term.) The complaint rests on a single case — that of conservative activist Kenneth Gladney, who got into a scuffle at a townhall in St. Louis, Missouri. The altercation was captured on video and you can watch it on YouTube. What you’ll see is a man, already on the ground, and another man stepping back in order to avoid tripping over him. The man on the ground is Gladney. Gladney walked away from the confrontation and later went to hospital, where he was treated for light injuries and released the same day. Whatever happened and whoever started it, this happily bloodless encounter bears not even the most glancing resemblance to the brutality that made Hitler’s brownshirts notorious. And yet, look up Gladney’s name online and he’s suddenly a poignant martyr.
Can we get a grip here? It is possible to express opposition to a president’s policies without preposterous name-calling — without diminishing and disparaging the unique experiences of those who did actually suffer from actual persecution by actual Nazis. After all, you know who else trafficked in hysterical exaggeration? That’s right: Hitler!

David Cameron joins the fray

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UK Conservative Leader responds to US wingnut attacks on the National Health Service:

We are proud of the NHS.

Millions of people are grateful for the care they have received from the NHS – including my own family. One of the wonderful things about living in this country is that the moment you're injured or fall ill – no matter who you are, where you are from, or how much money you've got – you know that the NHS will look after you.

Balloon Juice » A Brief History of Fail

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John Cole caught this little gem in Investors Business Daily

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

The wingnut attack on universal health care always always relies on lurid, false, horror stories about health care in Canada, UK, and other western nations.  So bloody dim and sloppy they don't even bother with anything resembling a fact check.

Update:  Stephen Hawking responds:

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told us. "I
have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I
would not have survived." Something here is worthless. And it's not him.